Of Digital Images and Digital Media: Approaches to Marketing in American ISKCON

This article is a theoretical and ethnographic investigation of the role of marketing and branding within the contemporary ISKCON movement in the United States. In it, I examine the digital marketing enterprises of two prominent ISKCON temples: ISKCON of New Jersey and ISKCON of D.C. I argue that by attending to the vastly different ways in which these temples present and portray ISKCON online—including the markedly different media imagery by which they aim to draw the attention of the public—we can learn about an ideological divide concerning marketing within American ISKCON. This divide, I argue, highlights different ideas regarding how potential newcomers become attracted to ISKCON. It also illuminates an unexplored facet of the heterogeneity of American ISKCON, principally in terms of the movement’s public face.